


Permanent Scars

by Ischa



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Halloween 2012, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-06
Updated: 2012-11-06
Packaged: 2017-11-18 03:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/556418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ischa/pseuds/Ischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is another Arthur origin fic...</p>
<p>  <i>“Suicide?” </i><br/><i>“At one point he couldn't handle the discrepancy.”</i><br/><i>“You think I can?” He thought back to the morning last week, where he stared for half an hour at his arm and willed the scar to appear. Maybe he wasn't cut out for this. Maybe no one should be dream-walking.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanent Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [omletlove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/omletlove/gifts).



> Beta: tygermine <3  
> Birthday fic for omletlove.

**~One~**  
There was smooth unmarked skin where Arthur knew should be a scar from a knife. He stared at it, first in the mirror and then just with his eyes fixed to the pale inside of his arm. It was disconcerting.  
Dreaming never should feel so real. 

~+~  
He had no idea how someone looked when they had just been torn to shreds. Limb from limb and piece by fleshy piece. He was glad, on some level that wasn't paralysed with horror, that he died (woke up) before they got to his eyes. On the other hand: he had to watch the whole time.  
There was really no way to win in a situation like this. 

“Arthur! Are you up?” his mother screamed. 

He nearly rolled his eyes. If he hadn't been, he would be now. “Yes!” 

“Church!” she shouted back. 

He sighed then. Church would not be his salvation. God wouldn't be his salvation. What it would be, he didn't know.  
A bullet to the brain seemed like a good idea on some days. 

~+~  
There weren't many books about dreaming, at least the scientific stuff, not the interpretation nonsense his aunt Magda liked to talk about, at the library in bumtown nowhere. But as this was where Arthur lived, was born and, if his mom had any say in it, would die leaving grandchildren behind to be as miserable as he was, that was what he had to work with.  
He read them there, because mom didn't think much of science. 

~+~  
“He has the gift,” Aunt Magda said, taking a sip of rose tea. She was probably one-hundred-and-seven years old. Thin as a twig and with heavy lidded eyes, that made her look a bit crazy and very beautiful. She was both. 

“The gift?!” his mother asked, her voice shrill to Arthur's ears. 

“The gift. Like grandfather Ebber.” 

Arthur heard of grandfather Ebber, but it was all very hush- hush, and he had just assumed grandfather Ebber killed someone or had sex with cows or had been in love with a girl of colour or something sinister like that. 

“Nonsense,” his mother said with a hard edge to her voice. 

Aunt Magda gave Arthur a look after Mom busied herself with something or other, that said he should find her later in the garden or at the edge of the swamp or the middle of a cemetery, and if she wanted to meet there, he would be there. 

He nodded and took a cookie. 

 

**~Two~**  
She was sitting on the old bench, probably from grandfather Ebber's time, at the edge of the swamp. It was too hot here. Arthur rolled up his sleeves. The dress-shirt mom made him wear to church was a nightmare. 

“Sit down, darling,” she said and he obeyed. She smelled like roses and old Chanel No5. They stared at the murky waters of the swamp for a while. She would talk, Arthur knew from experience, when she felt the time was right. 

“Grandfather Ebber,” she began, and Arthur briefly wondered again whose grandfather he had been, hers or mom's or Arthur's? It didn't seem to matter much. “He had a gift. The gift. He was a dreamer.”  
She fell quiet at that. Maybe to let it sink in. Arthur had no idea what she was talking about... She gave him a sidelong glance. He did know what she was talking about.  
“Are you dreaming Arthur?” 

“Everybody does,” he answered, staring at the swamp. 

She smiled. “He had been young when he discovered it and his mother, she was a Voodoo woman, but we aren't supposed to know about it, she taught him how to use it to his advantage.” 

“Dreaming?” Arthur asked with a frown. 

“Dreaming. He walked into other people's heads. Rummaged around in them, gave away pleasant dreams and nightmares like candy.” She sounded dreamy herself now. 

“How pleasant?” he asked. 

She grinned, and looked very young like that and a bit dangerous. “Oh darling,” she whispered and she was the only person alive or dead that was allowed to call him that, “very, very pleasant.” She closed her eyes and he listened to her breathe. 

“I'm being torn to shreds,” he said quietly and she nodded. 

“Because you don't know what you're doing. You are an elephant in a china-shop.” 

“Bull,” Arthur corrected. 

She waved her thin hand, the lace of her dress fluttering. “Semantics. Point is, Arthur, you don't know what you're doing and it's not your fault. You are torn to shreds because the other dreamer doesn't recognize you. Knows you shouldn't be there. Your head, your mind is the only thing that is truly yours and if someone invades it, you will protect it at any cost.”

“But grandfather Ebber could walk in and out of people's dreams.”

“And they paid him handsomely for it too. This house was built with dream-money. The old furniture was bought with that money. We aren't wealthy anymore, but we have this house and now,” she looked at him then, her grey eyes were like the winter sky, “we have you.” 

“Mom won't like it and I have no idea what I am doing anyway.” 

“I can teach you.” 

“Do you dream-walk?” 

She shook her head. “No, since grandfather Ebber no one did, or no one admitted to it.” 

“What happened to grandfather Ebber?” Arthur asked. 

“He died, like all people die,” Aunt Magda answered. 

“How did he die?” 

“I wish I could tell you a nice little story about him being murdered by people whose secrets he stole, but he did it himself.” 

“Suicide?” 

“At one point he couldn't handle the discrepancy.”

“You think I can?” He thought back to the morning last week, where he stared for half an hour at his arm and willed the scar to appear. Maybe he wasn't cut out for this. Maybe no one should be dream-walking. 

“You're only fifteen, Arthur,” she said. 

He sighed. “What does that mean?” 

“You can adjust, or you can drop it. You don't have to sell it like grandfather Ebber did.”

“What about the house?” It was in serious disrepair and some parts were already closed off. 

“You don't need it. I don't need it. I am a very old woman and you and your mom...” she shrugged.  
“You don't need 21 rooms for yourselves.” 

Arthur nodded, it was true, but he liked the house. Even in its current state, it was home. The swamp, the heavy smell, the half rotten wood of the westwing, and the heavy beautiful furniture. This was what would be left of his family when the flesh was gone.  
“I don't want to be torn to shreds anymore,” he said. 

“We should dream then,” she answered. 

~+~  
Arthur dug up a bit here and there about grandfather Ebber. Some of the old folks in town remembered him. Said he was a Voodoo-priest of some sorts. Said his mother had been of colour. Pale herself but not like them. Arthur didn't care for that. Skin didn't mean anything.  
Old Mister Morris (pronounced Mori), remembered him well. He had been a boy back then, but he remembered that grandfather Ebber went mad. 

“Crazy. Said this world wasn't real. Said he needed his scars.” He shook his head. 

Arthur grabbed his unmarked arm where a long scar should have been. “His scars?” 

“Man looked like he couldn't possible hold his own, you know? Scrawny, thin, but no one messed with him. No one. My dad had the most respect for him and my dad didn't respect anyone. I never saw a scar on grandfather Ebber, but it always felt like I should, you know?” 

Arthur did. He nodded. “And he killed himself?” 

“Yes, one day they found him in the westwing and they said there was blood everywhere. Like he -” Mister Morris looked up at Arthur then. “You look a bit like him.” And then he didn't say anything at all for the rest of the evening until Arthur went home. 

~+~  
“Grandfather Ebber was 37 when he killed himself,” aunt Magda said. She was lying on the bed, holding his hand, so they had a connection. She had given him some kind of tea. Dream-root. It tasted horrible. Left the impression of dead muddy leaves on his tongue. He was lying beside her. 

“I have roughly 20 years left then before I off myself,” he answered. 

Her hand tightened around his. She was surprisingly strong. “It's a gift.”

“Doesn't feel like it right now.” 

“Shh, darling. I'll give you the most beautiful dream I can think of,” she replied softly.  
His eyes felt heavy, the tea was kicking in. 

~+~  
With aunt Magda it was a gift. She let him wander around Paris and hide under the stairs in the westwing, closed off before his birth so he never even saw it. And she showed it to him in all its former glory. There was a memory of grandfather Ebber too. And Mister Morris had been right, Arthur looked like him. Not exactly, but in aunt Magda's mind they could be twins, or the same person in different stages of life. 

“I only want to dream with you,” he whispered and she laughed softly. Since he dreamed with her, he didn't wander off into other people's dreams randomly. Hadn't been torn to shreds in weeks. 

“Oh darling,” she answered and he squeezed her hand to prevent her from finishing that sentence. She kissed his cheek instead. Her lips soft, thin and old against his rosy skin.  
After all she was roughly one-hundred-and-seven years.

 

**~Three~**  
He stared at the coffin and thought she would have liked the swamp. His mother was at his side and a few people he didn't care about.  
After the funeral he went to the library and got the book about lucid dreaming. She had shown him things, he knew without her he would be wandering around other people's dreams again. He couldn't help it anymore. What were random accidents before, was a drug now.  
Dreaming was a far better reality. 

~+~  
“When you want to wake up,” she whispered, her grey eyes smiling, “you just have to die.”  
Arthur willed a gun into his hand. It didn't matter that he never held one before. This was a dream. He could do anything. And if he wanted a crossbow, he would will it into existence.  
He was still torn to shreds, gutted, and buried alive on one occasion.  
The only thing to do was to kill himself as soon as he realised he was in someone else's dream.  
And when he woke up, he stared at himself and waited for the blood, the bruises, the broken bones. Pain was in the mind.  
It didn't make it hurt less, it didn't make it less real knowing that. 

~+~  
Arthur needed to find someone to dream with. He needed to find someone to dream with before he went crazy and ended up like grandfather Ebber. Recreating every wound, every bruise, every broken bone, every scar until there was nothing left to break in his body.  
Or maybe, Arthur thought, maybe grandfather Ebber only wanted to wake up. Because this couldn't be his life.  
Sometimes when Arthur looked around his room, the kitchen, the house, so rotten you could smell it, at his mother – silver cross around her neck – he couldn't believe that this was his life either.  
The lines would blur with the time. Arthur knew that. 

~+~  
“I can't be the only one,” he said.  
Aunt Magda nodded. He knew she was only a projection. She wasn't real. She was a ghost, a shade, but she was the only one who made sense to him. 

“There are others. This is not limited to our family,” she answered. She was sipping rose tea, but Arthur couldn't smell or taste it, he never dreamed of these things. 

“Not here. Not in the swamp.” 

She smiled. “Not here. Not in the swamp.” 

“What do I need to do?” 

“Reach out,” she answered. 

It sounded very reasonable, but he had no idea how to do it and knew that she wouldn't be able to tell him. Not here, not ever. 

~+~  
He had two options.  
One: blow his brains out against the ceiling.  
Two: become a professional dreamer.


End file.
